Cult Victims Often Have Swiss Cheese Resumes

My friend Susie (not her real name) was at a loss for words, something very unusual for the 40 something chatterbox. She had come to me for help with her resume and had an unusual set of circumstances – five years of her life were lost to a cult and just how should she account for them?

Susie was facing a dilemma that many ex-cult members face after leaving the group and seeking gainful employment. And as bad as her situation was, it is worse for society as a whole – think of all the lost hours of productivity by intelligent, creative, hard-working people around the word who succumb to years of “slave labor” for cults. I often wonder what new technology or miracle drug or symphony was stillborn when it’s progenitor was silenced by a cult.

One of Robert Lifton’s criteria for thought-reform is the “doctrine over person.” This dynamic is clearly apparent when interviewing former members of cults about the employment they had before the cult and the work they performed while in the cult.

Professionals such as doctors and attorneys give up successful careers to assume menial labor in the cult’s headquarters. Teachers leave their classrooms to become waitresses. (Remember Clarissa in Join Us?) Students drop out of college to study in the cult’s training center to become missionaries in foreign lands that before held no interest to them, doing work for which they possess no particular talent or aptitude. Such a waste of human resources.

The repercussions of work and education related “doctrine over person” can be tragic: marriages break-up, families lose financial resources and often end up homeless,  individuals fall behind in current job markets, curtailed earnings affect future security, and again, society loses from the reduced tax base and increased welfare tab, thanks to “cult career counseling.”

So it was with great sensitivity that I listened to Susie as she told me her problem over the phone.

“Liz, I have to go back to work because Tony (not his real name) got laid off. What am I going to say on my resume about being in a cult for five years? I go from being a nurse to babysitting the cult leader’s children to working in fast food to no job at all. It looks like I got fired or lost my nursing license. Who leaves nursing to become a babysitter that flips hamburgers?”

The answer of course was, a cult member.

Susie had several things going for her, however, and I was quick to point them out. She still had her license, she left her last nursing job under good terms (joining the cult required moving to another city so it was natural to leave the job under relocation pretenses), and she was well on her way to recovering and therefore even able to hold down a nursing job again. The challenge here was to write a resume that was both truthful, but had clear boundaries around parts of her life.

“Look, you don’t have to put on your resume everything you have done, unless it builds a case for your skills. Do you think flipping hamburgers is a job skill you want to emphasize?” I asked.

“No, no, no! I don’t want anyone to ever know how desperate we were at that point. Tony was bagging groceries.” (Tony had a masters in environmental science by the way.)

“Then forget the hamburger job. It never happened. You don’t have to disclose anything on a resume that you don’t want to disclose. The main thing is to not say something that is not true.”

We bantered back and forth and then it became obvious that Susie had the perfect out. They did indeed move to another city to follow the cult leader and work for the organization in menial jobs, but Tony’s information was not going to be on Susie’s resume. The solution was to end the resume with the last nursing job, even though it had been five years ago. Reason for leaving? Husband took position in another city.

The rest of Susie’s resume was stellar. She had a good education, good job history, and good references right up until leaving the last nursing job. Now to navigate the job interview.

“But what do I say when they ask me why I didn’t get a job when we moved? Do I tell them I was a babysitter. They will think I lost my license!”

“Well, why didn’t you get one?” I asked.

“I didn’t want one, I was serving God by babysitting all of their brats!” she retorted.

“Ok, let’s reframe it. You say, 'I didn’t want one at the time, I enjoyed doing hobbies and taking some time off. Nursing can be stressful you know!’ That should be enough to satisfy them on that question,” I said.

Like most ex- cult members, Susie was shocked that she could set boundaries on what she would and would not disclose at an interview. Of course, Robert Lifton nailed this cult dynamic when he identified the confession practices used by abusive groups. Ex-members often feel like they have to tell everything to anyone who asks them something.
That is no surprise when one looks at the importance that confession assumes in the daily life of a cult member. It helped Susie to see she was just falling back into that old pattern of spilling her guts to an authority figure for no good reason.

Susie and I practiced back and forth some more possible questions and answers. She rehearsed responses about why she wanted a job now, when she didn’t want one when they first moved here. The answer to that was the simple fact that her husband was just laid off, a common occurrence in today’s job market.

When we hung up the phone Susie was more calm and ready to go to a resume service to get her resume updated with good looking fonts, stylish paper and current looking layout. She was excited that those five years in the cult was nobody’s business regarding her employment.

Other ex-cult members aren’t so lucky, however. Here are some scenarios.

Kyle has been out of the job market for 6 years. He followed a nomadic cult to India and actually lived on the streets begging at one point. Kyle’s job history before the cult was work as a city maintenance supervisor. Similar jobs today require a background check.

Natalie dropped out of college to work at a cult’s restaurant. Now four years later she wants to go back to school at an exclusive private college and has to write an essay about her education and employment history.

John had a successful clothing store, but turned over the keys to a self-improvement cult who ran it into the ground. John had to file bankruptcy and he recently moved to another city to put it all behind him. He is looking for a job in retail because that is the only work he knows. He is ashamed that his business was taken over and ended up in bankruptcy, and he fears the ridicule he will get from potential employers when they find out.

What would you suggest these people do?

Here are my thoughts.

Kyle needs to create more “background” by working in jobs that don’t require a background check before looking for a jobs that do. Although he did nothing illegal in India, it will look very suspicious in this day of terrorism that 6 years of his life are “missing” in a foreign land. In fact, it will be problematic to account for those 6 years for any job he pursues. He could possibly choose to selectively self-disclose regarding the 6 years in India by describing it as a wonderful time in his life spent doing odd jobs and visiting an amazing part of the world when he was young and free, but now, however, he is back to reality in the good ol’ USA for some gainful employment.

If pressed to discuss the experience during an interview, Kyle should focus on the adventures that show him in the best light – learning the language, meeting interesting people, and falling in love with the culture, and obviously not on the horrible times in the streets with no food. It will take some practice to “sell” it however, because those difficult times will always be with Kyle and color his memories of those 6 years abroad in a nomadic cult.

Natalie’s task is to make her dropping out of college the first time uninteresting and the things she learned about herself as a cook in a mom and pop restaurant insightful. She might emphasize in the essay that her first college experience was very rewarding, but she realized she needed some self-exploration before continuing with a college career. She found a perfect opportunity to learn more about herself when she became a live-in cook at a small restaurant in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

She can then impress the admissions committee with details about learning the value of hard work (no joke, she got only about four hours sleep each day) the importance of cooperation (well that was a given, if you did not cooperate you were required to fast for several days to get the sin of selfishness out of you) and planning for the future (after she realized she was in a cult, she spent weeks planning her escape back home to Nashville.) Of course Natalie will spare the committee those specific details and save them for the book she plans to write one day about the experience…long after she graduates from the exclusive college.

John is in the predicament of admitting he lost a business, but is good enough at what he does to work for your business! He is actually in the same boat with countless entrepreneurs who lose their businesses everyday for a number of reasons, only he lost his to a parasitic cult. His job is to find the courage to admit his business went bankrupt….that fact is easily discovered if he tries to hide it, and to couch the failure in terms that are familiar to employers.

Words like slow economy, poor investment choices, and cash flow problems from the seasonal clientele of a college town all ring a bell with business owners. Truthfully all of these things played a part in his business’s demise, however had a cult not been holding the purse strings John might have been able to pull out of the nose dive before he crashed and burned. A professional resume writer might be just the person to help John write a resume that focuses on his strengths, education, and previous work history before the bankruptcy.

What is your situation? Do you have a Swiss cheese resume with holes that have swallowed years, and even decades of your life to a cult? If so, you need to calmly and objectively take a look at the situation, keeping in mind that you don’t have to disclose anything that is embarrassing to you or likely to get you passed over in terms of your cult experiences. Choose what you will and will not discuss, how you will reframe your cult experiences, and rehearse what your answers will be to potentially embarrassing questions.

My own cult shattered work history taught me some valuable lessons about recreating myself and moving forward. In fact when we first moved to our new home 400 miles away from the cult, we were often asked what brought us to this new city. I learned to wink and say, “A U-Haul Truck!”